I can’t tell my wife about any of the details of our new home security cameras from NEST. I fear that she’ll learn about the level of security associated with all my digital home product choices, and literally shut me down before I perfect all my possible security measures.

Take a look at this live preschool webcam here. If you catch it at the right time, you’ll see the room full of kids playing. It doesn’t take much to use the latitude / longitude within a given radius to search a select number of day care and preschool locations. I narrowed this webcam down to less than 5 possibilities. I suppose the good side of this is that anyone can check to make sure the staff is working hard, taking care of our kids! The bad thing is that anyone has access to this day care in downtown Houston, TX. If you’re curious, take a look at the other 4400 unsecure webcams in the US by city on this site. If you’re real bored, you can use this IoT search engine, Shodan.io, to find any unsecured device around the globe.

One can also direct their attack at a specific person. Webcam infections, like many other malware infections, can occur if you download a program that contains a Trojan. Trojans, unlike viruses, do not spread through replication. Instead, they’re hidden within programs that you install on purpose. When a webcam hack occurs, Trojan malware finds a way to activate cameras and control them without the owner’s knowledge. If you’re on a MAC, like I am, stare into the webcam on your monitor and ask yourself, “am I being watched?”. Just ask Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf about her compromised Apple laptop webcam.

There’s an old saying that we’re only as safe as the weakest link in the chain. That saying has real meaning with the Internet of Things, where one weak link (IPTV, smart coffee maker, etc.) can bring down a chain of connected devices…and/or your entire home network. Here’s a list of default usernames and passwords of a number of targeted devices, in case you’re ready to test your own home security.

Here’s a list of the username and passwords of the most widely used webcams:

ACTi: admin/123456 or Admin/123456

Axis (traditional): root/pass,

Axis (new): requires password creation during first login

Cisco: No default password, requires creation during first login

Grandstream: admin/admin

IQinVision: root/system

Mobotix: admin/meinsm

Panasonic: admin/12345

Samsung Electronics: root/root or admin/4321

Samsung Techwin (old): admin/1111111

Samsung Techwin (new): admin/4321

Sony: admin/admin

TRENDnet: admin/admin

Toshiba: root/ikwd

Vivotek: root/<blank>

WebcamXP: admin/ <blank>

I include this list because, yes, I too was successful in hacking my neighbor’s webcam this weekend using one from this list. OMG!! In case you’re worried, here are a few precautions to keep your geeky neighbors off your home network.

Using your IoT device to hack into your home network

Fortinet researcher, Axelle Apvrille, found a Fitbit in her vicinity, and she used its Bluetooth connection to upload a small piece of unauthorized software into the device. When the Fitbit was synched via Bluetooth up to a smart phone and/or laptop, the Fitbit sent software to the connecting device as it uploaded its data. Once this back door was created into their system, Axelle could can gain full access to the user’s machine. She demonstrated this simple method of using a consumer IoT device to gain access to your home system at a European computer security conference last year. It was the first time malware has been viably delivered to fitness trackers.

Using your IoT device as part of a Botnet

If you were anywhere near the internet in the US on Friday, October 21, you probably noticed a bunch of your favorite websites were down for much of the day. It’s all because thousands of IoT devices — DVRs and web-connected cameras — were hacked.

Once the hackers had control over these devices, they manipulated them into sending an overwhelming number of requests to a company that serves up the websites for Netflix, Google, Spotify and Twitter. When the traffic became too much to handle, the sites crashed. It was an old-school attack — often called a distributed denial of service attack, or DDoS — powered by the new web of devices called the internet of things.

To take over the cameras, hackers inserted Mirai, malicious software that lets bad guys use at least 100,000 devices as soldiers in its IoT army. The technical name for this IoT army is a botnet, and hackers have been making them out of computers for a very long time. Except this time they used internet of things – an even more powerful tool to carry out attacks. They used the botnet to send tons and tons of junk requests to Dyn, a company that manages web traffic for all the websites that were affected.

Integrity of Things?

The European Commission is now drafting new cybersecurity requirements to beef up security around so-called Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as Web-connected security cameras, routers and digital video recorders (DVRs). News of the expected proposal comes as security firms are warning that a great many IoT devices are equipped with little or no security protections.

The Beginning of Your Digital Identity

This somewhat dates me (as I just recently celebrated my half-century birthday)…I remember my Radio Shack TRS-80 color display computer with a dial-up modem connection to the CompuServe Information Service (CIS) in the early 1980′s. I received my TRS-80 under the Christmas tree when I was a teenager.

Back then the “Internet” was all about file transfers, bulletin boards, and email. This is also, arguably, the beginning of social networking when users could communicate with a central system where they could download games and post messages to each other.

AOL created its member-created communities (complete with searchable “Member Profiles,” in which users would list pertinent details about themselves). If you don’t agree that CompuServe created the first social network (aka community), then maybe you’ll agree that AOL led the social network era with its community-based website.

By the mid-1990s it was in full motion. Yahoo! had just launched, Amazon had just begun selling books, and the race to get a PC in every household was on (Windows Version 3.0 became the default for every new PC).

Then a transformational social media site launched, called Six Degrees in 1997. It was named after the ‘six degrees of separation’ theory. Six Degrees allowed users to create a profile and then friend other users. Six Degrees also allowed those who didn’t register as users to confirm friendships and connected quite a few people this way.

By the year 2000, around 100 million people had access to the internet, and it became quite common for people to be engaged socially online. Of course, then it was still looked at as an odd hobby at best (e.g. for geeks like me).

In 2002, social networking hit its stride with the launch of Friendster. Friendster used a degree of separation concept similar to that of the now-defunct SixDegrees.com, but refined it into a routine dubbed the “Circle of Friends” (yeap Google, you weren’t the first to try!), and promoted the idea that a rich online community can exist only between people who truly have common bonds. And it ensured there were plenty of ways to discover those bonds.

From there it’s history! Most people recall that “social” took off from there with networks like MySpace (2003), Linkedin (2003), Facebook (2004), and Twitter (2006).

Social Networks Empower Digital Identities

Back in 2002, few knew that Larry Drebes was studying the huge potential of social networking while he was at Yahoo!. He had became a part of the Yahoo! team earlier when they acquired his company, Four11, which created the product RocketMail. Four11′s RocketMail became the basis of Yahoo! mail today.

Larry had envisioned a need where companies would need to manage the growing number of user digital identities. This led to his work as part of the founding team of OpenID, a protocol that allows users to be authenticated by co-operating websites (known as Relying Parties or RPs) using a third party identity authentication service. The thinking was that people on the Internet could register and login into their digital applications without having to have a separate identity and password for each. The OpenID protocol work led to Larry starting Janrain, and Larry realizing his vision. Janrain became the first to provide what is referred to as Social Login today, and that was only the beginning.

Identity Access and Management Explodes

Managing customer identities on both web and mobile applications is known by you and me through our daily experiences with traditional registration and login, social login, Single Sign-On (SSO), profile management (e.g. filling out your public information like your nick name, your city, schools attended, hobbies, etc) and preference management (e.g. what information that you want to opt into). It may seem simple, but the seamless consumer experience takes a lot of work under the covers by companies who are constantly enhancing your digital experiences.

Behind the scenes, your banks, retail stores, wireless carriers, hospitals, digital home product providers, and utility companies are all working with a group of Identity Access and Management (IAM) providers to offer a host of digital identity services that effectively automate identity services such as:

User Provisioning

Access Management

Multi-Factor Authentication

Single Sign-on

Directory Services

Password Management

Governance & Compliance Management

Janrain may have been the first to create the category back in 2002, but now it’s one of many companies who have seen the potential in making consumer digital experiences simple and safe. Other companies in this space include:

All these companies have two fundamental things in common: 1) Identity and Access Management, of course, and 2) the End-User or Customer. These companies are better known for providing identity services to external end-customers as opposed to internal employees of global enterprise companies (employee identity and access management is used for legacy workforce applications and/or workforce to SaaS use-cases).

Vendors known for internal or more traditional employee-centric IAM include:

There is also a big difference between older solutions originally engineered for on-premise deployment (initially designed for physical servers in company data centers) versus native cloud engineered solutions. For example, companies like IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and CA all initially addressed IAM through traditional software solutions whereas new entrants like Okta and OneLogin were born out of the public cloud generation.

Similarly, Janrain launched its native cloud services on Amazon in late 2005 right after the public cloud giant launched, whereas others in the customer identity and access management market established themselves as traditional software products.

Your Worst Nightmare – Digital Identity Theft

Javelin’s report, ”2015 Identity Fraud: Protecting Vulnerable Populations“, found that fraudsters stole $16 billion from 12.7 million consumers in the U.S. ALONE in 2014. With a new identity fraud victim every two seconds, there continues to be a significant risk to consumers who embrace going digital.

Data breaches were a big headline in 2014 (per the Javelin report), and they had a significant impact on identity fraud – see eBay (145M customers), Target (110M customers), Anthem (80M customers), TalkTalk (4M customers), and Dropbox and Box. The study found that two-thirds of identity fraud victims in 2014 had previously received a data breach notification in the same year, with many indicating their wariness about shopping at merchants, including big box retailers.

The Yahoo! breach of over 500 million consumer identities announced this last month established 2016 as the “year of customer identity breaches” – it was the largest in history. Most consumers might not think there’s much in their Yahoo account that would be of use to hackers, which typically might only include their email and Yahoo password. However, those two bits of information offer multiple uses for ingenious hackers bent on extracting the maximum value from information, say experts.

According to a Gartner survey, 50% of users reuse their passwords across multiple platforms. So armed with an email address and Yahoo password, hackers might be able to gain access to multiple accounts. The technique is called “credential stuffing” and it’s become epidemic over the last year and a half, said Avivah Litan, a vice president and analyst at Gartner Research. “The bad guys get lists of user IDs and password and then test them, they run through them at all the sites they want to attack to see where they work,” she says.

Other credential theft results due to “holes” found in company’s identity implementations. Back in 2014, Target’s massive data breach in the U.S. that was tracked back to December 2013 involved personal information being stolen including credit/debit card details of close to 110 million individuals. According to Cowen Group’s (a financial services firm) note to investors, criminals were able to hack into Target due to a lack of security, which was later determined to be a direct result of under-investment. Target quickly embarked on technological changes that cost more than $100 million in addition to $61 million incurred in breach related expenses in Q4 fiscal 2013 alone! Since proactive investments into things like customer identity security is a CEO decision, Gregg Steinhafel was in the firing line. Shortly after the breach, the company stated that Steinhafel and board members had mutually decided that it was time for Target to continue under new leadership.

One particularly notorious identity theft story involves one Simon Bunce, an Englishman who subsequently lost his six-figure job and became alienated to friends and family. This all happened because his credit card was used to purchase and download child pornography. Bunce, an avid online shopper, claims to only have dealt with large retailers and secure sites. Nevertheless, he was swept up as part of a massive UK anti-predator police offensive called Operation Ore. He was arrested on charges of possessing, downloading, and intending to distribute indecent images of children. His home and work computers were confiscated, along with a range of storage devices and media. As you may already have gathered, though, Bunce was innocent of these crimes. Investigators later determined that his credit card details had been entered into a computer in Jakarta, Indonesia, and that he had actually been using the card at a South London restaurant at almost exactly the same moment. His credit card details had been taken from one of the many popular online shopping sites he frequented, as a result of a data breach. Although the situation was eventually resolved, Bunce said the damage had been done. “Being arrested and accused of what is probably one of the worst crimes known to man, losing my job, having my reputation run through the mud, it was a living nightmare,” said Brunce.

External Bad Actors using Your Credentials

You may have heard something differently, but the threat actors haven’t shifted much over the last five years. Based on the Verizon 2015 Data Breach Report, internal employees and partners (typically covered by enterprise identity access management vendors) is not where the real risk lies. It’s data breaches occurring from outside or external parties.

We find that most of the attacks make use of stolen credentials, “which is a story we’ve been telling since 1A.D”.

With attacks making use of stolen credentials, over 95% of these incidents involve harvesting credentials from customer devices, then logging into web applications with them.

I want my digitalworld to have the utmost highest level of security, ensuring that the integrity of everything associated with me and my family. So, should I worry about my identity as it applies to the digital things in my life, or the integrity of the things associated with my identity? I do know that my digital identity will be even more important as I expand my digital world from web and mobile applications to consumer IoT devices.

When I drive home in my new Tesla S with built-in infotainment, I’m thinking about relaxing at home. I prefer my easy-listening station on Spotify around volume 5, with my home lights dimmed, and the temperature around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s “Jim’s setting”. This is compared to my wife Annie’s preference for Indie Pop that would be up to eleven (if she could), with the lights bright, and the temperature around 60 degrees (I know what you’re thinking..but don’t say it!). That’s “Annie’s setting”.

We’re a “connected family”. I have two sons, Trevor and Devon, who both are heading into their teens and lets just say they don’t know what the word “analog” means.

Am I afraid of a rouge device adding itself to my network? Do I worry that someone can see my family lounging to Indi Pop through my indoor cameras? It’s definitely a growing issue, and a space that makes thousands of employees, or millions of consumers look like a small problem….trillions of internet connected things all exposed to bad actors?

I want that experience from my Tesla to digital home to be seamless…but also safe. How about you?

Infochimps, a CSC Company

Me: “Mike, I’m looking to expand my board as we prepare to close our Series B financing.”

Mike: “Jim, I can’t take any board positions myself. I’m busy with CSC. What is it you guys do?”

As I explained my fledgeling startup business, it became clear to me that Mike and his senior team were investing into Big Data, the space I was disrupting.

Mike: “Jim, you need to talk to Dan Hushon, our CTO. It sounds like what you’re doing in building out a network of datacenters with Big Data analytic services is exactly what we need to do with our 50 CSC datacenters.”

Me: “Sorry Mike, you’re too big. Talk to me in two years.”

Having done this several times, I knew that big companies don’t always partner well with small companies. Fast forward to my discussion with Dan Hushon. He and I aligned around the use of SUPERNAPS (datacenters that are certified Tier IV in both design and facility categories) to deploy data analytics services to Global 3000 customers who had already begun their journey in datacenter modernization, consolidation and datacenter outsourcing. The idea of co-locating our analytics services with the data already housed in CSC’s datacenters made sense. But, I was still not sold on working with CSC.

Dan: “You guys are doing exactly what we need to do. How can we work together?”

Me: “Forget it. I told Mike the same thing. Talk to us in two years. We’re closing a round of financing. Let us ramp a bit and we’ll reengage later.”

I had created a carefully architected 6-month integration plan that started with partnering with CSC for one quarter, followed carefully with the integration into their Big Data & Analytics business unit in the second quarter.

Big Data & Analytics

After a successful integration of Infochimps, I was ready to leave. I had finished my job establishing Infochimps as the engine for the BD&A business unit growth (we exceeded 50% YoY), adding the Big Data Platform as a Service to its offering mix. The various business functions of Infochimps were carefully assimilated into their corresponding BU business functions – marketing, sales, consulting, delivery, offering/product management, etc. Then it came time for my next conversation with Mike at a CSC sales conference in May 2014.

Mike: “I understand you’re ready to leave.”

Me: “Yeah. I’ve completed my integration. It’s time.”

Mike: “I have another idea. How about you run the Big Data & Analytics BU for me?”

Me: “Why me Mike? My profile is more aligned to being the CEO of an emerging company. I’ve finished my job here.”

Mike: “Our biggest challenge at CSC, moving forward, will be it’s culture. I need leadership that understands how to energize the workforce with vision and execution that helps us shift from ‘optimizing’ to ‘growth’.”

I then spent the next 18 months leading the fastest growing segment of CSC. I was a part of Mike’s executive management system for the entire time, and this turned out to be one of the most amazing experiences an executive could have.

People, in general, have inflection points in their careers, being influenced by an individual/mentor, a significant event in the business, something life-changing. Well, I’d put this experience in that category.

I’m still amazed with Lawrie’s management system which facilitated one of the most amazing turn-around one could witness first hand. Taking over a company that had many silos globally with virtually no visibility into their businesses, 15 layers with over 370 VPs, no money on the balance sheet, bad credit….a company that was, essentially, near bankruptcy. I can imagine the conversations with the Board when Mike first came in. If I had been a fly on the wall, I could imagine hearing:

Witnessing the CSC transformation as part of his senior team is also not experienced by many – this was not only an opportunity, it was a privilege that I didn’t take lightly.

Digital Applications

As my contributions to the BD&A business within the Emerging Business Group (EBG) came to a close in August 2015, I was, once again, planning my departure….my second attempt to leave.

At this time, Mike and members of the senior team where planning to combine two parts of the business, that later became the Digital Applications business. I was approached by two of Mike’s EVPs – Jim Smith, EVP of Global Business Services, and Dave Zolet, EVP of the Americas Region. As I saw it, I could either leave to lead a mid-size company as its CEO, or accept a new challenge at CSC and work for a couple dynamic EVPs. Long story short, both Jim and Dave convinced me to help them.

Jim Smith: “I want to work with you Jim. Help us with the largest square in the business.”

David Zolet: “The Americas is the largest region in the world, and the new Digital Applications business will be the most important line of business.”

In September 2015, we were tasked with combining what previously was the Enterprise Software Consulting business with CSC’s Applications Delivery business – a combined $2B business globally and $1B in the Americas.

Bumping into Mike in the hallways at the corporate offices in Falls Church, Virginia, Mike catches me talking to the head of Digital Application HR talking about….yeap, my favorite topic: Cultural change.

I had just finished with my offsite with my senior team in the newly formed Digital Applications organization (over 35 direct reports). I’m giving the head of HR my typical cordial hello….in this case a hug, talking about organizational changes which I was pondering for Q4 (the new business unit was being created through Q3 and I needed 3 months to get the “house in order”).

Mike approaches and he mimics the HR VP and me by putting his arms out. So why not, I turn and give Mike a hug as well, suddenly feeling awkward. If you have worked with Mike, you’ll appreciate it when I say, this was probably a first (at least publicly). In any case, Mike and I have a brief exchange:

Mike: “We’re counting on you. You have a huge challenge on your hands.”

Me: “I know. I won’t let you down.”

Well, Mike wasn’t kidding. I had 7,000 challenges on my hands. That was the size of the team, and we needed to come together under a new suite of application services that aligned with our customer’s need to manage their portfolios holistically. The main application platforms, of course, included legacy on IBM, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft; as well as emerging next-gen enterprise SaaS applications using Workday, Salesforce, and ServiceNow. “All we needed to do” was “simply” rationalize every one of our customers’ application portfolios to determine what to replace, rebuild, refactor, rehost, revise, or retire.

Application portfolios varied in where they fell in their life cycle and what platform they were deployed on, and it was definitely a challenge on how to rise above the technology and focus on the application rationalization. However, that wasn’t the real challenge in the business. The real challenge was that my business was predominantly time & material (“staff aug”) across over a 100 of the fortune 500 in the Americas. We were essentially in the business which I described as “Talent Solutions”.

This meant that our largest near-term opportunity was to improve our ability to recruit, onboard, and place talent into our existing accounts. But not just place “talent” but place the “best talent”. I figured that if I could grow the staff aug business by 5%, we could have the same business impact as growing the consulting business by 20%. As many in the business know, growing a headcount business by 5% differs quite a bit when compared to creating a differentiating C-suite consulting services and growing by 20%. And, in the end, the reality is that we needed to do both.

Fast forward to the end of Q3, we managed to get line of sight to as much as 12% growth in the core business (not counting customer terminations or, in general, one-timers). Everyone understands that customer happiness = protected base (e.g. no terminations, no completions without follow-on work, no price-downs, etc.). So, besides the typical operational hygiene improvements, we focused on the real jewel…the breakthrough opportunity.

If we inspired our workforce to embrace a culture of creativity, innovation, “glass-half full” thinking, we could, in term, inspire our customers. Our customers would begin thinking that the culture of CSC was becoming more aligned with their success. This meant moving from a position as a “vendor” to a position as a “strategic partner”. In some cases, this meant that we would have to “fire the customer” and get out of a “race to the bottom” offshore $/hr battle with Indian pure plays. This wouldn’t be easy, because it meant leaving revenue on the table (but it meant leaving low, if not unprofitable revenue on the table).

Why Chapter 17?

So why leave CSC now? The momentum sounds positive, and the experiences great. Well, I come back to the culture. Remember when Mike said, “Our biggest challenge at CSC, moving forward, will be it’s culture.”? As I reflect on this for any company, CSC or otherwise, I can’t stop thinking about the difference between management and leadership…or managers and leaders. I digress only a little.

The main difference is that leaders have people follow them while managers have people who work for them. The manager’s job is to plan, organize and coordinate. The leader’s job is to inspire and motivate. In his 1989 book “On Becoming a Leader,” Warren Bennis composed a list of the differences:

The manager administers; the leader innovates.

The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.

The manager maintains; the leader develops.

The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.

The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.

The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.

The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.

The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader’s eye is on the horizon.

The manager imitates; the leader originates.

The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his or her own person.

The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.

In short, I aspire to lead. Thus, it’s finally time. I’m off to Chapter 17, which will have much more leadership than management in it. The ride was great, but it’s time to get back to disruption and it’s time to thrive with leadership.

The following were a few Big Data companies that I was keeping an eye on starting back in January of 2015 (yeah, this is NOT a statistically significant sample)….some for “old times sake” because I new the founding team and was curious how things were progressing, some because I trust their venture capital partners, and some because they inspire me with an application of the technologythat is meaningful (I’m tired of hearing about yet another “Big Data Platform”).

Adatao is Big Data 2.0, enabling the convergence of business intelligence, data science and machine learning directly on top of big data. Adatao is leading the Big Data 2.0 charge by making it easy for business users, data scientists and engineers to collaborate on data analytics. Their vision is to deliver Data Intelligence for All.

Cask (originally called Continuuity) makes it easy for any Java developer to build, deploy, scale and manage Apache Hadoop and HBase applications in the cloud or on-premise. Continuuity Reactor, its flagship product, is the industry’s first scale-out application server and development suite for Hadoop. Continuuity Reactor empowers developers to focus their efforts on the development of the application by abstracting the complexity of Hadoop components and exposing the power of Big Data in a simple and intuitive way.

Big data is too hard and too slow. Enterprises need big data on demand. Cazena was founded by former Netezza leaders with a mission to radically simplify and speed up access to big data, allowing much faster business outcomes at a fraction of the cost. Cazena is backed by Andreessen Horowitz and North Bridge Venture Partners.

ClearStory Data’s solution is a new data-intelligent analysis solution that eases and speeds disparate data analysis enabling fast blending and convergence of data from internal and external data sources for holistic insights. It enables more disparate sources to be accessed, converged and analyzed without requiring deep IT skills, data experts or data manipulation. End-users visualize, interact, and collaborate on insights in real-time to speed data-driven decisions. ClearStory’s customers are G2000 companies that need fast-cycle, multi-source analysis to answer new business questions that span more sources of data.

Databricks is building next-generation software for analyzing and extracting value from data. Databricks is led by a team of professors that has created the in-memory Apache Spark and Shark platforms for analyzing big data. Databricks is currently in stealth mode.

DataPad is building an agile, collaborative tool that helps you prepare, explore, analyze and share your data. By building on years of perceptual research studies, DataPad is engineering a visualization system that is best suited for human eyes to see and for the brain to understand. With DataPad, finding insights in your data is a breeze: our smart defaults and intelligent tools help you choose the right visualization for the job, every time. DataPad went from being in stealth mode to becoming a part of Cloudera.

GoodData, the leader in end-to-end cloud analytics, enables more than 35,000 companies to store, combine, analyze and visualize data to quickly answer business-critical questions. GoodData’s mission is to help companies become all data enterprises: organizations that gain a competitive advantage by leveraging all data through advanced analytics. The GoodData Open Analytics Platform helps companies manage and analyze that data in one seamless, interactive environment and create breakthrough applications to empower their customers and users.

Quantifind is a marketing insights platform that leverages predictive analytics models to extract insights from large sets of consumer conversations. Quantifind finds consumer language patterns that are meaningful in driving sales or other key performance indicators (KPI) for brands. The technology evaluates thousands of consumer language patterns and calculates which ones are most likely connected to movement in a given brand’s KPIs. The technology then determines which patterns can be used in a predictive model and performs cross-validation techniques to rule out spurious correlations. Quantifind’s Signum platform can help major consumer brands guide brand strategy decisions. Today, Quantifind’s clients use Signum across their organization spanning marketing, product, ops and company-wide strategy.

Mixpanel’s mission is to help the world learn from its data. They’ve built the most advanced analytics platform for mobile and web, growing the number of actions they analyze to over six billion every single month. Mixpanel’s platform empowers individuals and businesses to explore their data instead of reading canned reports. Every day, some of the leading companies in gaming, e-commerce, social networking, and media are surprised by what they learn from Mixpanel and ultimately are in a better position to make strategic decisions.

Platfora is the #1 Big Data Analytics platform built natively on Hadoop and Spark. Platfora puts big data directly into the hands of business people through self-service analytics that help them uncover new opportunities that were once impossible or impractical across transaction, customer interaction and machine data. An interactive and visual full-stack platform delivered as subscription software in the cloud or on-premises, Platfora Big Data Analytics is creating data-driven competitive advantages in the areas of security, marketing, finance, operations and the Internet of Things for leading organizations such as Citi, Sears, AutoTrader, Disney, Edmunds.com, Opower, Riot Games, Vivint and TUI Travel.

SolveBio delivers the critical reference data used by hospitals and companies to run genomic applications. These applications use SolveBio’s data to predict the effects of slight DNA variants on a person’s health. SolveBio has designed a secure platform for the robust delivery of complex reference datasets. We make the data easy to access so that our customers can focus on building clinical grade molecular diagnostics applications, faster.

uBiome provides personal metagenomics (bioinformatics analysis) for the microbiome – the trillions of bacteria that compose much of your body. Unlike human DNA-based genomics, bacteria can be used as biosensors to monitor and change your health. uBiome is building a platform so that the public, clinicians, research foundations can ask and answer questions about the microbiome and helping us to build the world’s largest dataset of microbiome and metadata in the world which can then be used for diagnostics, therapeutics, and product development. uBiome is the first direct-to-consumer microbiome sequencing company, giving citizen scientists access to cutting edge sequencing technology, with thousands of users who have already purchased kits. They also help companies and institutions connect with research participants by working with the public to sequence their microbiomes.

“Dad, if my character dies in the game, would I die in the real world?”

What a beautifully naive question that my son, Trevor, asked me during a son-dad conversation about how games might change over the years.

Earlier last year, Mattel’s CEO, Bryan Stockton, was fired. After three years, it was clear that Mattel was continuing to be challenged with sales weakness, and lower gross margins, which drove down shareholder value.

As parents, we ALL know that it’s a very competitive toy aisle, and our kids are much different than we were at their age.

Mattel’s toys haven’t been “good enough” at a time when peers like Hasbro and Lego continue to report higher and higher sales. It’s not just Mattel. Nintendo, the one-time market leader video games brand best known for legendary characters like Super Mario, has been struggling to keep up with the times as mobile gaming explodes and “next-gen” consoles become cutting-edge.

So what’s happening to the toy market?

A New Toy Generation

I grew up as a child of the RPG generation (Role-Playing-Games), starting with my own “Ken and Barbie” equivalent with my Hasbro Stretch Armstrong. I then graduated to the Lego era (starting with my Grandma’s Legos from Berlin), to my favorite era of HotWheels, and then Mattel Tyco Toysslotcars (by the 1980s, Tyco dominated the electric slot car racing market as well as the radio control category. Mattel acquired them in 1997).

I had a wonderful childhood of imagination where I played the roles of many super heroes on many adventures. As parents, we forget how wonderful our “inner stories” and games were.

“Dad, I’m busy right now. I’m in the middle of a story.”

My son would stare out the car window telling himself a story….imagining himself in the middle of some wonderful scene…something he thought up as part of his own imaginary world. I love watching him and his brother, Devon, role playing battles, creative worlds, that they both dream up daily.

So why isn’t Ken and Barbie, MegaBloks (Mattel’s version of Legos), and their many other brands like BOOMco not fueling this new generation of creatives, like it did mine?

How Are Kids Engaging Today?

I’ve never graduated from being a kid. Some of my friends say that I’m just a kid in an adult body. I recall telling my high school friends that I couldn’t wait to have children, just so that I could play with their toys.

Clearly the answer to the Mattel dilemma varies a bit based on age. However, there is a common theme, starting even with the youngest children – It has to do with the fact that most of our world is becoming digital.

For decades, children’s “digital experience” was essentially limited to watching television or listening to music. Few parents complained about a child becoming addicted to listening to music, or being addicted to television. However, it has now been a growing concern among parents, and has now extended beyond TV.

Today, parents not only need to be vigilant about how much television their children watch, but the many other forms of media coming from the internet, smart phones, iPods, iPads, Wii games, and the like.

Kids today spend over 50 hours of “screen time” every week. In our family, “screens” include the TV, any computer device, and any phone. Kids will go to many extremes to get on a “screen”.

“Trevor…Devon, where are you?”

My wife will call my boy’s names to find out where they are in the house…only to find them tucked under the crawl space under their beds hiding behind their respective screens.

The media content they consume has a profound impact on their social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development. Learning how to use media and technology wisely is an essential skill for life and learning in the 21st century. But parents, teachers, and policymakers struggle to keep up with the rapidly changing digital world in which our children live and learn. Now more than ever, they need a trusted guide to help them navigate a world where change is the only constant.

RPGs Evolve to MMORPGs in the Digital Domain

Role playing with action figures has evolved into a suite of digital and virtual environments that provide massively multiplayer online role-playing game experiences. Why wouldn’t my kids want to move from playing with their lego figures to playing minecraft with a host of their friends? In fact, games like Wynncraft and Phyria are bringing digital games for kids to a whole new level. But this all scares me.

Do I want my kids to connect with their friends through a screen….or, rather, be outdoors with their favorite toys? In both cases, their creative natures are fueled. I’ve seen some very creative minecraft worlds constructed by both boys. But I’m torn. I think I’d prefer to see that same “world” constructed in legos in the backyard, hidden under a wood box with rocks on it. Wouldn’t you?

How do we combine offline and online experiences, providing a healthy balance?

Toys + Gaming = IGTs (Interactive Gaming Toys)

According to the NPD Group, three out of four parents (77%) stated purchasing an IGT, a new generation of toys, was worth the investment compared to other types of toys or games that could have been purchased. Almost two-thirds of parents stated that they are extremely or very likely to purchase a new IGT game (65%) or a new character (67%) in the next six months. So what is an IGT? Also known as “Toys to Life“, it’s an approach where our children’s toys become more real:

LEGO Dimensions: Lego Dimensions is an upcoming Lego action-adventure video game developed by Traveller’s Tales and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Wii U, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. LEGO has grown the dollar share of females in recent years. So, with LEGO Dimensions there is potential to shift the IGT consumer to be slightly more female.

Star Wars with Disney Star Wars 3.0: Disney Infinity 3.0 is an upcoming action-adventure sandbox video game published by Disney Interactive Studios and LucasArts for the Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and the third installment in the toys-to-life Disney Infinity series. Star Wars has cross-generational appeal, playing into the fact that IGTs target parents as well as children.

Amiibo: Much like Star Wars, Nintendo’s cast of characters has a cross-generational appeal to gamers. Many gamers grew up on Mario and Zelda, which has the potential to draw in a new, potentially older consumer into the IGT space.

Skylanders: Activision created this gaming segment, and each year they have innovated on the initial Skylanders concept. Ideas like Swap Force and Trap Team added new gameplay elements to the experience in recent years. Though details are scarce on a new Skylanders, I am looking forward to seeing what Activision has up their sleeves (likely to be revealed at E3 this year) and how it could also expand the market.

These are a combination of toys and digital games, combining the physical and digital worlds. It’s an interesting direction…one fueled by the interest of the next-generation child.

Toys & Big Data

CEOs of fortune 1000 companies all over the world invite my team into the board room to discuss how information (data) can help them truly become digital. Why? Because they know that data is at the center of their business. Data is at the core of a future suite of digital applications delivering new customer experiences.

This is all about “re-imagining” your business, by starting with the customer’s digital experience. In this case, it’s our children.

If you were Christopher Sinclair at Mattel, what would you be dreaming up for your children’s world of toys? Lets imagine a combined physical and virtual world that provides a completely new digital experience for our children. This is what Mattel’s senior team has begun.

In February this year, Mattel announced that it will offer “experience reel” cards that will offer exclusive content that will be available as a Google Cardboard application, specific for Mattel customers. This means that you can wear Mattel toy glasses and combine your physical and virtual worlds. You can enter into Barbie and Ken’s virtual world.

Imagine your children taking your home and painting it with colors they like, adding virtual furniture they prefer, hanging their own art on the walls, interacting with their favorite characters in various rooms.

Mattel also announced its partnership with San Francisco startup ToyTalk, which through a cloud-based app can enable your toys to have conversations. This supports the idea of conversational play. The doll uses speech recognition to record your kid’s conversations and store them in the cloud. The doll records any human speech it detects in an effort to intelligently respond. So, any human conversation within its hearing can be stored in the cloud and analyzed. On Christmas Day, Barbie could ask a child what they received from Santa. Or Ken could ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I’ve been involved with data and analytics infrastructure since I can remember….the early 1980′s. I’ve been trained on the nuances of how to collect, store, analyze, and operationalize data for a variety of use-cases for my entire career.

What I see, is an infinite number of opportunities to leverage data for a host of new educational, personalized, engaging toy applications. When you know what your child is thinking, interested in, worried about, toys can become a gateway for not only a personalized experience (e.g. when a toy responds back to your child, addressing them by their name), but the toy can listen to their worries and alert us parents about opportunities to assist in addressing our children’s fears, their curiosities, their thirst for knowledge.

Toy makers can use the same information to better classify children, constantly improving on their toy designs, their games, their educational curriculum.

“Dad, can we turn our house into legos?”

Imagine….a digital world where anything is possible:

Your family is in a rush to leave the house. Your toddler starts screaming because he can’t find his favorite stuffed animal. You pull out your iPhone and receive a signal that the animal is in the bathroom upstairs. You retrieve it in two minutes versus an hour long, blind search.

Imagine all Barbie dolls have iBeacons. If there is another doll in the area (with another girl), you could find her to see if she wanted to play. iBeacons could take ‘hide n go seek’ or tag to the next level.

Turn the real world into a secret virtual game. With all players outfitted with a Mattel toy iBeacon on them, you can play an impromptu game of freeze tag, meet the new flash mob game, etc.

You’re at Comi-con (a conference for comic fans), and your child would love to “run into” their favorite character. Pull up the event’s application and see a signal where that character is. When you’re nearby, tell you kid to close her eyes and make a wish to see if we can make the character appear. Within moments, the character comes around that corner and a wonderful memory was just made.

A child walks down street with connected baseball glove. As he or she walks by houses on his way to the park, other kids’ connected baseball gloves start to buzz. They look out the window, see a neighbor kid heading to the park, and go outside to play a pickup game. Technology brings back the “good old days” when kids actually played games in parks with other neighborhood kids.

These are just a few fun ideas from Jen Quinlan, who brainstormed a few ways that iBeacon technology could be applied with real-time analytics, contributing to a new digital world with new interactive digital applications.

Lou Gerstner became president of American Express in 1985 at the age of 43. He dismissed the speculation that his success was the product of being a workaholic. Gerstner said, “I hear that, and I can’t accept that. A workaholic can’t take vacations, and I take four weeks a year.”

As I write this, I’m in Wyoming with the family enjoying Yellowstone and Jackson Hole thinking, “Can I somehow achieve the level of impact of Lou Gerstner with the right work-life balance?” What keeps people from having to cancel vacations, modifying schedules to take budget calls, or work while the family sleeps?

From 1998-2001, Mike Lawrie, CEO of CSC (where I work today), was General Manager for IBM’s business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Overlapping Mike’s tenure, Lou was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of IBM from April 1993 until 2002 when he retired as CEO in March and chairman in December. You can only guess that many of the tricks that Lou used to turn around IBM, were taught to many of his executives who were paying attention, like Mike. I share some of my perspective from what I’ve, in turn, learned….some of what I believe to be “Gerstner Secrets of Leadership”.

In general (again, if you are paying attention), I’m convinced that you can learn from several generations of the most advanced leaders. I have enjoyed watching and participating in what I am now convinced is one of the most basic and yet most important components of leadership – a proper “management system“. Not sure why they don’t call it a “leadership system”….but here are some of my observations which I believe can be applied to any size enterprise.

The Wrong Management System

I first have to describe what I believe is a “typical” management system, run by “typical” leaders (or in many cases dysfunctional management systems by people who don’t lead, but simply manage).

There are many organizations which have been built based on the principal that a few people are “in the know”, while the rest of the organization is somewhat in the dark, waiting to be told what to do. In this situation, many do their job without having any appreciation or understanding of how their actions fit into the bigger picture.

The organization has no understanding of what the vision is, their exact role, and most importantly their ability to participate in being a part of the change. Those who know me, know that I prefer to lead with cultural change first, and my mantra of involving my staff in that change in an open and transparent way.

Many organizations are filled with people who manage by keeping information to themselves….thinking that either “knowledge is power” (so this is an intentional activity) or that “it’s none of your business” (somewhat less intentional). Why share what you are thinking or what you are doing with others when it’s not their job to know or, heaven forbid, have an opportunity to challenge your thinking?

Have you ever heard, “this is my responsibility, not yours….there are many other things you are not involved in – because your role is “xyz”. Let me handle this – ok.” or “There is no need to share this, that is part of the P&L that I run.”? I have heard these exact words from peers in the past. It’s a great example of the type of the behavior which is empowered within an organization that is run “hierarchically” versus one that is run “collaboratively”. I believe that this type of behaviour should and can be corrected with the right leadership…..starting with the right management system.

In many environments, a leader either intentionally or unintentionally is acting as the gateway for information. Leaders, by default, have more access to what is happening within the organization.

In a dysfunctional environment, dysfunctional leaders are a sponge for any/all information of how the business is being run…but it stops there. Information only flows in a single direction. These leaders are typically very hard to schedule time with, they are always traveling, visiting with other leaders within the business. Sound familiar?

When something important in the business happens, a member of the team will communicate it up to the leader. The leader may or may not pass on that information to others. In many cases, if they do, it’s to an “inner circle” of people in a small “clique”….those who have an immediate need for that information. Others find out through “the grapevine” later, if they are lucky. If there is no real forum for communication, a broadcast of and discussion about this information is challenging. Sound familiar?

Take a large IBM-type of organization where there are several lines of business (LOB), regions with geographic leadership, and industries with domain-specific leaders. This is a very typical matrix model for large and mature companies. So lets study a dysfunctional model a little more.

In this model, an LOB leader will take it upon themselves to engage with other LOB leaders, regional leaders, and industry leaders…depending on the need, and/or who has more political power and knowledge. These LOB leaders can speak very intelligently to their business, of course, and “manage up” very well. They educate themselves well on the aspects of the business, which they should. But it usually stops there.

In a dysfunctional organization, the rest of the organization is clueless, and is always trying to “read the minds” of their leadership, playing constant catchup. Some succeed in this type of organization by becoming part of the “inner circle” or being aggressive in their attempts to align. Efficiency is low and execution marginal. Direct reports get frustrated, many leave, and those who remain are heard saying, “I haven’t had a chance to meet about the quarterly objectives. I don’t know where he/she is…I think they are traveling to Italy, Switzerland, and then Turkey.” Sound familiar?

Don’t get me wrong. Getting out of the office and engaging the organization is good. Meeting with others in the organization and/or customers is absolutely necessary. In fact, if you’re not spending at least a third if not half of your time in front of customers, partners, industry, you’re much too “internally focused”. We use the phrases “outside in” and “inside out”.

As a leader; however, before you leave home, you have to make sure you take care of business at home first, providing your staff with the proper framework to promote communication, transparency….and in a way that creates the most high-performing team, and builds trust. A high-performing team trusts each other the same way a Navy SEAL team might trust each other when going into battle. When your team has the fundamentals in place, THEN go on your roadshows. But not until you have the right management system in place FIRST. This is where most leadership falls on its face…no matter how big or small the organization is.

Have you ever been in the position where you have new boss (a CEO in a small company, or a VP/EVP in a larger company) who spends their first nine months on the job doing an organizational assessment, devising a strategy, and then beginning the execution of their strategy….all with no formal one-to-one meetings, only a few senior team meetings where each direct report had 10 minutes to share status, a couple all-hands meetings, and maybe an annual offsite planning meeting with only two-thirds of the team? If you are reading this and saying to yourself, “So, what’s wrong with that? Seems typical to me.” You are in a great position to learn from Lou Gerstner, Mike Lawrie, Jack Shemer and the like.

The Right Management System

In my humble opinion, the Gerstner-type of organization has a management system which doesn’t allow this type of behavior to persist. So what would a high-performing, “next-gen” management system look like?

Here’s an analogy. Imagine an organization where the leader is a conductor of an orchestra. Imagine the orchestra where each musician is playing an instrument, but couldn’t hear each other…or intermittently heard each other….and they all couldn’t see the conductor from where they were sitting. The conductor might move into a line of sight to give them a quick bit of direction and then disappear. How might that sound?

Members of a high-performing team must be able to hear each other, and get regular direction from their leaders. Strong leaders enable communication and transparency and provide a system that forces collaboration between members of the team and collaboration with others outside their line of business.

In such an environment, knowledge transfer is key…NOT knowledge hoarding. Discussion and challenging each other openly and frequently is required, not forced communication through email or ad-hoc phone calls. A strong communication pattern allows the team to hold each other accountable to each other’s success, not a focus on themselves and “my P&L”.

When information enters into this system, especially important and timely information, that information travels extremely fast. Ask any member of the team and they are ALL in “the know”, not just one or some minor set of individuals. This team is high-performing and can address critical, time-sensitive issues fast. The level of trust is high, because there are no secrets. And equally as important, the team feels like they are a part of the change, impact, and a team itself. This builds a healthy culture.

When leaders don’t have a strong management system, the staff becomes dysfunctional at best.

Typical Excuses From Poor Leadership

You might have heard, “Why do we need 1to1s for our team? We have well-experienced executives and they can reach out to me when they need to discuss something important. Everyone has my cell phone and knows I’m available day, night, weekday, or weekend.”

Or maybe you’ve heard, “We can’t afford to have the senior team come together so often. Time is money. You should know what you have to focus on, and if you don’t, come and talk to me.”

“We can’t afford to have the global team together each quarter for business review and planning. We’ll do this once a year for budgeting, and can find time together during other events over the year.”

So what is the right time commitment and meeting cadence? What type of management system is appropriate? Personally, everyone who has worked directly with me over the past 15 years, has heard me say, I only need 5% of your time as a team on average. I have a very specific management system for CEO’s of startups (a role I’ve had many times, for many years).

Senior leaders of larger organizations; however, are expected to spend 20% and maybe up to 30% of their time internally focused. It becomes even more important that people have access to you, and to each other as a senior team.

From my experience, in a large IBM-like organization, I will spend 20-25% of my time in meetings which I can book a year in advance. Yes, A YEAR IN ADVANCE. That doesn’t mean that you set times in your calendar which never change (although a strong CEO will never reschedule), but you at least know what kinds of meetings and their cadence which you generally want to keep consistent (so others can plan their customer visits, vacations, etc. accordingly, and not have to cancel, rearrange, or augment).

Successful leadership starts with understanding this, and establishing the right meeting mix and cadence that drives communication and transparency.

An Example Management System

When I took over a business unit of a modest size on a Thursday, we were working as a team on our management system the following Tuesday. Why? Because I knew, without the proper structure in place, I would immediately become part of the problem….especially in a fast-moving, fast-changing organization. I knew that establishing the right amount of connective tissue among the team was the biggest gift that I could give them.

Lets study the example of an EVP that runs a Line of Business (LOB) of several thousand people with several component businesses, many geographic regions (a global company), with offerings which address multiple industries. As an EVP, you report to the CEO and are part of a larger “CEO office” with other EVPs. So how would one balance their time across their own LOB, other LOBs, regional leadership, industry leadership, and the CEO?

I believe you need to target 25% of your time on creating a meeting structure that involves the “internal team”, leaving another 75% for customers, partners, industry, your own creative/strategic time and, of course, overhead (things like eating, traveling, preparing for meetings, email). So, with several thousand people under your leadership, your LOB team of 16 executives (Operations, CTO, Strategy, Sales, Marketing, HR, Regional GMs x5, Practice GMs x4, Offerings), here’s how my management system looks after tweaking things a bit:

Management Meeting Time: 24%

Customer Visit Time: 33%

Industry / Partner: 15%

Strategic/Self Dev: 10%

Other (Travel, OH): 18%

In this example, you have four categories of “management system” time:

Your own LOB Senior Leadership Team

Regions

Industries

CEO Senior Leadership Team

Here’s a deeper view into a proposed management system for those interested.

Believe it or not, this is 10% of your time! Imagine how your staff would feel, if you created this level of connection/communication and at the expense of only 10% of your total time budget! Most people agree with this, EXCEPT, the daily standups (more on that later).

Regional Component of Your Management System

Lets use the example of a US-based company where the “regions” are outside of the “Americas”, and include Central & Eastern Europe, South & West Europe, UK & Ireland, ANZ, AMEA, and India (7 regions all together). Here is a proposed meeting structure:

Quarterly Business Review / Strategy: Regions have their own QBRs (with in-region leadership)

Annual Strategy / Budgeting: Regional-specific involving your staff

All-Hands: Regional-specific involving your staff

In this case, you (the EVP) will not participate in all of the above. However, you’ll make sure these meetings are established. For example, if you have 1to1s with your regional GMs, but they do not have 1to1s with their local leadership, then you’re failing. It’s YOUR job to make sure the overall management system is in place.

For the EVP, this takes up 1.5% of your overall budget, not including actual face-to-face (f2f) visits to the region. However, when you take trips abroad for weeks at a time, I include this management meeting time as part of the 1to1s, customer visits, strategy, etc. You may plan to spend one week in a any given region, two regions per quarter as part of your “roadshow” calendar. However, those always involve a much broader agenda, and should not compromise the above for both you AND your team.

Industry Component of Your Management System

Engagement with industries might involve:

LOB & Industry EVP/VP Leadership Meetings: You will want 1to1s minimally each quarter with each of your industry leaders for an hour (review your quarterly business plan highlights with them…and I don’t just mean TCV, Revenue, and OI)

LOB & Industry Senior Teams: This is a 1/2-day as a part of the LOB QBR where you engage an industry leadership team and work them into business planning.

Quarterly Business Review / Strategy: These are the QBRs that the Industries hold themselves (you may join)

Annual Strategy / Budgeting: These are held by Industry leaders (who may ask you to join)

So, your Industry organizations will have their own QBRs and Annual budget planning meetings. What you want, is to steal a part of their time for your team to engage with the industries in a coordinated way. If you have 6 industries, how do you make sure that your organization touches ALL of them in a thoughtful way (ideally, you don’t want uncoordinated / random engagement with others)? I, personally, like to make sure that my team touches 2 industries per quarter as part of my QBR. Therefore, I invite last least one Industry group (or up to two) to my QBRs. That means that a 3-day QBR agenda would have 2 days of LOB/Practice+Regional content, and 1 day of Industry content. Novel huh? Forced cadence for the organization as whole. Most “leaders” don’t get this. They just leave it up to their senior team to engage the organization randomly (why not, they are well paid executives…who should be able to figure this out, right?).

For the EVP, this equates to a little over 2% of your time budget.

CEO-Office Component of Your Management System

For the EVP, plan on another 9%+ of your time budget meeting with the CEO. Meetings might involve:

Operational Review: Going over the LOB P&L metrics

Decision Committee: Proposing and agreeing on core changes needed across the organization

Investment Review: Where you make your R&D investments

Key Client Review: Agreeing on the proposed contracts for large deals

Sales/Delivery Excellence: How to improve winning and delivering

Deal Committee: M&A opportunities

Alliance Review: Partnership traction/strategy

HR Steering: Cultural/talent change

Financial Review: Managing costs

CEO & EVP/VP 1to1s: Real-issue discussions

You many not be involved in all of these meetings, but in a healthy organization, the cadence is strong. In a high-performing organization, the cadence is not only strong, but the dialog is hard..meaning that the CEO teases out the real issues from the team, and doesn’t just spend time talking, or asking their staff to provide status.

Your 1to1s can be the most important

As one example, lets dive into the mechanics of 1to1 meetings. First of all, this includes EVERYONE. I don’t place any less or more value on the role around the table. That means that HR and Marketing are at the table. In a dysfunctional organization, many of the “shared” functions are left out of the “strategic” meetings.

Therefore, in my example this includes Operations, CTO/RD&D, Strategy, Sales, Marketing, HR, Regional execs, Practice leads, and Offerings. In my example, this consists of 16 people and, to some, might seem unmanageable. This is a huge time commitment for just 30min every two weeks. You might hear yourself asking, “Why can’t I do this in an ad-hoc basis”?

This meeting creates the connection between you and your team in a way that is hard to value at first. I argue, that this can NOT be replaced with ad-hoc meetings over lunch, in the bathroom, in the hallway. No, this is a meeting where you talk about the topics that are important to your members, individually…and it can range quite a bit, meeting to meeting. Topics may include:

Performance Rating / Comp (are you feeling valued?)

Objectives for the Quarter (obstacles to accomplishing?)

Career Goals (how to develop / invest in yourself?)

Peer issues (problems with others in the org?)

Company blocker / issues (things in general I can help change?)

How can I improve?

Tactical Items (hot topics?)

I keep copious notes on my 1to1s that I refer back to each time I have a meeting. It’s like having our own personal “psych session”. Sometimes for me, sometimes for the team, sometimes for both of us. I also make any/all conversation fall into the “cone of silence” where it never goes beyond us, unless told otherwise. These occur biweekly to once per month, depending on the size of the organization.

“Real Issue” Team Meetings

Another “pet peeve”….how to orchestrate your own team meetings. Do you simply go over quarterly status week to week? Do you ask each of your team members to spend 10 minutes, and simply provide them the “microphone” in a “stand-up” kind of way? I think this meeting time is one of the most challenging…because to get your team to “open up” with what is bothering them….what are the key obstacles in their way, is the difference between “management” and “leadership”. Read the five dysfunctions of a team, and get back to me.

Here is how I like to run my weekly senior team meetings (I call them “roundtables”).

Agenda:

Good news check-in / Larger announcements or news

Anything holding us back on our quarterly objectives?

Discussion around “Real Issues”

Documenting critical action items

If time permits:

Top priorities for next week

Customer and employee hassles not already covered

Discussion around overall quarterly status

Key events coming up

But the key here….is focusing the majority of the time on “Real Issues”. I, to date, have NOT seen executives focus on this…so I have to explain this a little to make a case for this meeting style.

Definition of a “Real-Issue”:

A topic that would make your stomach linings churn, if brought up as a team

Something that you are uncomfortable talking about (especially as a team)

Jack Shemer & David Hartke – True Legacies

Whenever Jack visited me, he used to leave sticky notes on my desk with nuggets of wisdom. For example, “Keep people you trust close to you.”…or, “Key values for Teradata were: Pride, Enthusiasm, Importance of the Individual, Teamwork and Open Communications, Ethics, Dedication, Quality, Support, Success, and Entrepreneurship.”

In the month of July, 1999, Jack Shemer and David Hartke both decided to come out of retirement to help me and my team start a new company, INCEP (along with a few other veterans of the industry including Art Collmeyer, Bob Adams, and Phil Paul). Little did I know, Jack would not only “give me my wings as a CEO”, but he started a process which ended up transforming me, creating the value system I use today.

“Initial Partner Presentation 1980, prior to Beta test in Dec, 1983″ was the note he wrote on his initial Teradata business plan, which I still have today. Inside was a copy of a less formal “Preliminary Business Plan” dated April, 1980. Jack (CEO) and Phil Neches (CTO) where both on the “payroll” then (with only $175K of seed capital later to be augmented with institutional money from Brentwood Associates run by Tim Pennington and Kip Hagopian). Co-founders David Hartke (Engineering) and Jerry Modes (Finance) planned on leaving their current day jobs within then next month (after their first true round of financing). With funding they could bring the entire founding team together plus a few project leaders.

Their first milestone was the “demonstration of a complete, working hardware prototype” within 18 months (December 1981). Jack was asking for only $2.5M of initial venture funding to carry the team through milestone 1, and another $3M to get to the “first system ready for shipment to a customer” by December 1982 (month 30). They eventually closed a Series A of $2.6M on July 23, 1980, and subsequently raised $12M in December 1981, $12M in January 1983, and another $40M over three additional rounds in 1984, 85, and 86. Teradata IPO’d August 1987 raising $37.5M of public capital.

YNET

Few people know that the backbone of the Teradata Database Computer (DBC) was originally referred to as the HINET (“High Speed Network”), later renamed to the YNET, and then redesigned as the BYNET.

The DBC1012 was designed to attach to existing mainframe and mini-computers to provide a substantial increase in system throughput, response time, ease of use, and reliability….using a relational model DBMS. The target was to increase throughput by as much as 4 times that of IBM’s IMS, and support two orders of magnitude in data base size and processing power. [Note: I'll compare this approach and the current approach of Hadoop from providers like Hortonworks and Cloudera in a future post.]

The YNET was engineered to interconnect up to 1024 processor modules (Interface Processors or IFPs, and Access Module Processors or AMPs) in a distributed, shared nothing, Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) configuration. The YNET was originally envisioned to support broadcast and sorting, allowing for linear scalability (e.g. performance improvement does not degrade with added process modules). Believe it or not, the system was engineered to scale from 1.5 to 512 MIPS (yes, back in 1980 only 512 MIPS).

Fast forward, in 1990, a team was formed in a joint-development between NCR and Teradata. The project code name was “P90″ and it consisted of an elite team of 100 engineers from Teradata and 100 engineers from NCR, who were placed in an abandoned building in Torrey Pines, San Diego. Our charter was to “kill IBM” by producing the most powerful next-generation database system in the world.

At the time, the YNET still provided for communication among all processors (AMPs, IFPs, and COPs – the COP had the same functions as the IFP, but was used to communicate with network attached DOS-PC/UNIX hosts). The YNET always operated in a broadcast (one-to-all communication) mode and the two YNETs (primary and backup) had a total system bandwidth of 12 MBPS at the time.

It was well understood that Jack Shemer and David Hartke’s invention, the YNET, would easily support 200-300 processors using 80386 Intel CPUs (rated at 4 MIPS each). However, scaling above 512 next-generation processor modules (rated at 100MIPS each) would result in the YNET becoming a bottleneck (the network would become the limiting function of scale).

BYNET

So we embarked on a journey to develop the next-generation YNET that could scale to 4096 high-performance nodes, where we could easily support 10 MBPS PER PROCESSOR MODULE, linearly scalable up to 4096 processors (vs. 12 MBPS in total on the network). Thus, a 512 node system would support bandwidth up to 10.2 GBPS.

The other breakthrough was creating a network that allowed processors to communicate either point-to-point, multicast, or broadcast. This design leveraged concepts from the Banyan Crossbar Switch, where the network is constructed from the modular switch node building block. In the case of the BYNET, we created a switch node where it was an 8×8 crossbar that can connect any of its eight input ports to its eight output ports simultaneously, arbitrating when conflicts arise. It operates very similar to that of a telephone network.

A sender (one of the many Teradata processors) “dials” a receiver (another processor) by sending a connection request to the network. The request contains an address or “phone number” which is interpreted by the switch nodes. Once the connection goes through, a circuit is established that is held for the duration of the “call”. To support up to 4096 nodes, a folded indirect n-Cube topology was modified. There was no such network topology known at the time like ours, but generally it was in the Banyan class of topologies.

A folded network was chosen to support packaging large networks. Because this was a database machine with large amounts of data being routed between nodes, a circuit switched network (vs. packet switched) was implemented. The BYNET has no single point of failure with redundant paths between every input and output. The BYNET guarantees delivery of every message and ensures that broadcasts get to every target node. So the database isn’t plagued by communication errors or network failures and does not have to pay the price of acknowledgements or other error-detection protocols. This part of the Teradata system was truly disruptive.

Behind me and the team in the above picture is a 256 node Teradata 3700 database system, circa 1992.

Remember the days when we were debating the definition of “Cloud”? That was as recent as 2009. Fast forward to 2014 and we’re facing the same ambiguities with the Internet of Things (or IoT).

It’s a market that is as big or bigger than Cloud. IDC expects the overall market for IoT to grow at a 12.5% CAGR from $1.3 trillion in 2013 to $3.0 trillion in 2020. IDC also forecasts that there will be approximately 30 billion autonomous things attached to the Internet in 2020, which serve as the catalyst driving this significant revenue opportunity. IDC believes that services and connectivity will make up the majority of the IoT market — outside of intelligent systems; together, they are estimated to account for just over half of the worldwide IoT market in 2013. IDC expects that by 2020, this percentage will inch up to 66% of the worldwide IoT market (outside of intelligent/embedded systems) but give way to the increasingly valuable platforms, applications, and analytic services that are forecast to together equal 30% of the total market revenue.

It’s a big opportunity….IoT. So what is it exactly?

Wikipedia IoT Definition

Wikipedia defines the Internet of Things (IoT) as the interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices within the existing Internet infrastructure. Typically, IoT is expected to offer advanced connectivity of devices, systems, and services that goes beyond machine-to-machine communications (M2M) and covers a variety of protocols, domains, and applications. The interconnection of these embedded devices (including smart objects), is expected to usher in automation in nearly all fields, while also enabling advanced applications like a Smart Grid.

IDC IoT Definition

IDC defines the Internet of Things as a network of networks of uniquely identifiable endpoints (or “things”) that communicate without human interaction using IP connectivity — whether “locally” or globally. IDC has identified the IoT ecosystem as having the following piece parts — intelligent systems, connectivity, platforms, analytics, applications, security, and services. While the overall market opportunity is represented in terms of billions of connected things and trillions of dollars in revenue opportunity — the question continuously asked is where the revenue opportunity lies across these different technology layers.

Other key aspects of IoT:

The IoT brings meaning to the concept of ubiquitous connectivity for businesses, governments, and consumers with its innate management, monitoring, and analytics.

With uniquely identifiable endpoints integrated throughout networks, operational and location data, as well as other such data, is managed and monitored by the intelligent or traditional embedded system that has been enhanced and made part of IoT solutions and applications for businesses, governments, and consumers.

IoT is composed of technology-based connected solutions that allow businesses and governments to gain insights that help transform how they engage with customers, deliver products/services, and run operations.

GigaOm IoT Definition

GigaOm defines the internet of things as an ultra-connected environment of capabilities and services, enabling interaction with and among physical objects and their virtual representations, based on supporting technologies such as sensors, controllers, or low-powered wireless as well as services available from the wider internet.

Internet-connected objects, devices, and other “things” are proliferating in every domain.

Farmers’ gates can be fitted with SIM cards to monitor whether they have been left open or allow farmers to close them remotely. Cows are being equipped with pay-asyou- go devices, which can send SMS texts when they are in heat.

Beer barrels now have radio tags so that they can be tracked from brewery to bar and back. Indeed, few supply chains exist today without some kind of automated product tracking. Many major supermarkets now offer bar-code readers to self-scanning shoppers, for example.

Startups such as Supermechanical and Electric Imp are creating monitoring devices that can be connected to light bulbs or other electrical devices, garage doors, or windows or simply left in the basement to check for water leaks.

“Things” don’t necessarily have to be small: Buses, trains, and cars can be fit with monitoring devices so they can provide accurate information to both control rooms and customers.

Gartner IoT Definition

Gartner defines the Internet of Things (IoT) as the network of dedicated physical objects (things) that contain embedded technology to sense or interact with their internal state or external environment.

Industrial IoT vs. Human IoT

I like how Moore Insights and Strategy defines IIoT vs. HIoT. Designing for IIoT requires deep understanding of solution spaces and an ability to connect systems manufactured many decades apart. IIoT favors solutions vendors such as DIGI, Echelon, and Freescale, who have solid roots in the industrial control world. HIoT favors fast moving prototyping driven by leaps of faith in user experience (UX) and device design, exemplified by the Maker community in particular, led by vendors such as Apple and Microsoft.

IoT Predictions

Gartner predicts that, by 2020, the installed base of the IoT will exceed 26 billion units worldwide and will consist of a very diverse range of smart objects and equipment. Between 2014 and 2020, the number of connected objects will grow explosively and few organizations will escape the need to deliver applications that link smart objects and equipment to their corporate IT systems. However, systems involving the IoT will be very different from conventional IT applications, so IT leaders must act now prepare for this future.

IDC estimates that as of the end of 2013, there were 10 billion IoT units installed — with IP connectivity and communicating autonomously. IDC predicts that the installed base of IoT units to grow at a 16.8% CAGR over the forecast period to 29.5 billion in 2020 (see Table 3). Enablers for the impressive growth rate over the forecast period include but are not limited to pervasiveness of wireless connectivity, ubiquitous access to the Internet regardless of location, IoT standard protocols, government support for efficient technologies and services, innovation happening in a new segment of the tech market, and business process efficiencies and consumer realities around a connected lifestyle.

IDC’s 2014 predictions for IoT are as follows:

IoT Partnerships Will Emerge Among Disparate Vendor Ecosystems

Leaps of Faith in 2014 Will Create End-to-End IoT Solutions

Open Source-minded China Will Be a Key Player in the IoT

“Plumbing” of the IoT Will Attract Significant Activity in 2014

IoT Will Come to Healthcare in 2014

Mobility Software Vendors Will Continue to Show a Lack of Interest in IoT

Worldwide “Smart City” Spending on the IoT Will Be $265 Billion in 2014

A Smart Wearable Will Launch & Sell More Units than Apple or Samsung Wearables on the Market in 2014

IoT Security Is a Hot Topic, But There Will Be No Heat Until There Is a Fire

Health care is already making use of telehealth systems and services, an area likely to grow substantially over the coming years both inside hospitals and across community service delivery.

Agriculture is looking to combine sensor data (such as soil analysis) with environmental data, satellite imaging, and so on.

Physical retail is known to be struggling, particularly in light of lower-margin ecommerce. The future of physical retail lies in delivering improved experiences to customers, enabled by the internet of things.

Public safety and defense can benefit from the increased use of sensors and monitoring, combined with information from broader sources (environmental, geospatial, and so on).

Technology Business Research (TBR) believes lucrative returns will not come from sales of Internet-ready fashion, appliances or connected home electronics. TBR expects the IoT market over the next two years to be incredibly turbulent as customer adoption of new devices will be hit or miss, and device companies will invest hundreds of millions of dollars in product development with little return other than learning which devices do not appeal to customers. TBR believes health and fitness presents the largest opportunity, followed by personal safety. Ezra Gottheil believes that consumer IoT will complement and often lead the commercial IoT, and together, they will fuel a wave of innovation and expansion in all segments of IT. Jack Narcotta believes that the biggest upside will come from the platforms device vendors will construct. New IoT-ready platforms will enable vendors to embrace the first generation of IoT devices and allow the devices to intercommunicate with vendors’ current respective ecosystems. New platforms will also effectively future-proof vendor IoT strategies from the effects of fickle customers, peaks and valleys in demand for specific form factors, and the introduction of new protocols and technical standards.

IDC believes that there is no one vendor that will emerge as a winner. This market will involve a collection of vendors, service providers, and systems integrators that need to coexist and integrate products and solutions to meet the needs of customers — enterprises, governments, and consumers.

IDC believes that the opportunity is being led by the IT hardware vendors, followed by software. This is probably based on the fact that hardware spending in general, about 40% of total IT spending, drives downstream spending in software and services.

So where does one focus? B2C or B2B markets? Both? IDC sees almost an even split.

B2C?:

Security

Children/Pet safety

Energy

Health & Fitness

Smart Appliances

B2B?:

Inventory Management

Fleet Tracking/Diagnostics

Shipment Monitoring

Security

City Systems (Parking, Street Lamps)

But $3T by 2020? That’s actually down from their $7.1T 2020 revenue forecast in their Worldwide and Regional Internet of Things (IoT) 2014–2020 Forecast: A Virtuous Circle of Proven Value and Demand, IDC #248451, back in May 2014. The change in forecast was due to how IDC weighted which use-cases grew faster. The high-end IoT scenario involves systems that have advanced monitoring and analytics. Mid-high-end scenarios have rich “track and trace” capabilities with exception-based reporting + prediction. Mid-low-end scenarios involves exception reporting, but without prediction. Low-end scenarios are only simple “track and trace”…no exception handling, and no prediction.

A “thing” categorized within the “low-end scenario” could generate $2 per month with a temperature sensor in a carton/container, generating $24 per year (e.g. tallying the goods moved from Asia to the US via boat freight). The “high-end scenario” could generate $100 per month with a monitor in a critical care unit, generating $1,200 per year (e.g. providing prescriptive capabilities around sepsis – which is the most expensive condition treated in hospitals, accounting for over $20 billion in annual costs to the U.S. healthcare system).

At Directions 2014, IDC’s Carrie MacGillivray, talked about which industries were leading the charge with IoT based on the Value vs. Volume of the devices in their connected device networks. Insurance, Retail, and Transportation are considered the established IoT sectors, while Manufacturing, Consumer, and Utilities are the most promising in terms of growth.

Vernon Turner‘s view is that Intelligent Systems (30%) is going to be the largest segment in the stack. Vernon also believes that companies like Bosch and GE will lead on Industrial IoT, while companies like Apple and Microsoft will lead on Human IoT.

The term Internet of Things was coined by the British technologist Kevin Ashton in 1999, to describe a system where the Internet is connected to the physical world via ubiquitous sensors.

Today, the huge amounts of data we are producing and the advances in mobile technologies are bringing the idea of Internet connected devices into our homes and daily lives.

Definition of IoT Has Expanded

Internet of Things was a popular concept dating far back to articles like Scientific American in 2004. RFID and sensor technology enabling computers to observe, identify and understand the world—without the limitations of human-entered data.

However, I think people took it beyond the capture of “physical” events/data. I think Kevin Ashton envisioned a network of things that originally was wholly dependent on human beings for information, and then expanded to involve anything that touched a person (physical or not), passing from machine to machine.

Capturing the behavior of people will require a much broader collection of data beyond just sensor technology…beyond the “physical” – whether that is web server clickstream data, e-commerce transaction data, customer service call logs, search logs, video surveillance, documents, etc. There is much more than “physical” or sensor-only data that involves the customer.

To truly begin understanding the behavior of people, you need to capture data from any touch point, gaining a holistic view of that person. Gaining a 360 degree of your customers, or a 360 degree view of your business by leveraging an environment of structured and unstructured data that can be analyzed….M2M (Machine to Machine) and/or IoT (Internet of Things) involving physical devices becomes a subset of the data sources available to such a project.

Is IoT a subset of Big Data or Visa Versa?

I was talking to the head of Big Data & Analytics at SAP (a peer to CSC’s Big Data & Analytics), David Parker, regarding IOT vs. Big Data. Their management has established a new IOT business unit, which I guaranteed David, would be addressing similar business use cases as his Big Data team at the end of the day.

Last year Mukul Krishna, from Frost & Sullivan, presented a simple incremental view of how IoT feeds Big Data which then feeds a broader analytic platform. Think of IoT as a bunch of customized data sources (typically machines and sensors) leveraging customized collectors that feed a comprehensive platform (e.g. Hadoop vendors like Cloudera and Hortonworks) which, in turn, allow us to feed downstream analytic, BI, and visualization platforms.

Are Sensors the Core of IoT?

A sensor is technically any device which converts one form of energy to another form, the end usually being an electrical form mainly for measurement, control or monitoring purposes.

Take a typical temperature sensor like a gas pressure based tube sensor which expands or contracts to convert the temperature into a mechanical motion which can be displayed, recorded or used for control as required. Translation….I just described a thermostat as used in a refrigerator.

The raw electrical signal from a physical sensor is usually in analog form, and can be conveniently processed further and displayed on a meter or other suitable indication device or recorded on paper or other media such as magnetic tape or more advanced digital systems as required.

The sensor is typically classified as per its application and there could be many different types of sensors, with their own inherent advantages or disadvantages for a particular application. Putting it simply, the sensor generates an output which can be conveniently displayed, recorded or used to control or monitor the application at the point where the sensor is installed.

What’s so special about sensors? You can translate the analog physical world into a digital computer world. We convert the sensor’s analog signals into digital signals so that the computer can be able to read it, and then we feed that with other digital signals into a Big Data platform.

“Technologies that operate upon the physical world are a key component of the digital business opportunity.” as described by Gartner. Many of these “physical sensor technologies” may be new to IT, but they are expected to be high impact and even transformational.

I think IoT requires a lot of talent on the many types of physical sensors and how they are ultimately converted into a form that the emerging Big Data platforms can consume and analyze.

IoT needs a Big Data Platform

Getting your plants or your fridge to talk to you through sensors is one thing. Getting your plants to talk to your heating system is quite another. As we map the spread of IoT, it starts to get more complicated and barriers appear with a centralized big data analytics platform, or lack thereof, likely to halt progress.

Jeff Hagins Founder and CTO of SmartThings, described the data platform he has been working on that should help expand IoT and help product designers work out new ways of connecting machines and people.

He believes that the Internet of Things has to be built on a platform that is easy, intelligent and open. I argue that the evolving Big Data platforms introduced by the web scale giants like Google, Yahoo!, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook and the like will become a standard for IoT-based applications….and IoT is just that, a set of specialized sensor connectors or sources coupled with a Big Data platform that enables a new generation of applications.

The blurring the physical and virtual worlds are strong concepts in this point. Physical assets become digitalized and become equal factors in understanding and managing the business value chain alongside already-digital entities, such as enterprise data warehouses, emerging big data systems and next-generation applications.

I ventured out of the “big company” environment back in 1998. It was 15 years later when I found myself back in the big company environment – a $13B revenue company after my startup was acquired.

As part of an executive team of 18 at a publicly-traded company, the environment could be considered a lot different when compared to any of the eight startups I was involved with prior. However, the reality is that it is not.

A good company environment is made up of the same factors, regardless of company size.

Even though I find it challenging these days to make time to reflect on the changes I need to make to improve my own leadership….I know that if I don’t, I will fall into a trap…a spiral.

Creating a “good” company environment, or in my case, a good business unit environment, may not be that important when things are going well.

When things are going well, the staff is excited to be working at the company because:

Their career path is wide open with lots of interesting jobs that naturally open up.

You, your peers, your family, and even your friends all think you are lucky for choosing and being a part of such a success.

Your resume is getting stronger by working at a company during its boom period.

However, when things are challenging…and your business is struggling…all those reasons become reasons to leave.

The only thing that keeps an employee at a company when things are challenging is that people actually like their job.

Having worked and led staff through the toughest times of company life and death – including things like working for free, working long days and nights, working on weekends – I know what can be asked of a team when times are tough. But no team is going to respond to your requests of sacrifice for long, if they are working in a bad company environment.

In bad company environments, good employees disappear. In highly competitive and quick to change technology companies, disappearing talent starts the spiral.

When your company’s most important assets leave (your top performers), the company struggles to hit its numbers; it tries to backfill its core talent but can’t recruit it fast enough; it misses its milestones; declines in value; loses more of its key employees.

Spirals are extremely difficult to reverse.

So, yes, creating a “good” company environment isn’t that important when things are going well….but it sure the hell IS important when things go wrong.

…and things always go wrong.

I personally come to work every day because of the people first…..then the adrenalin fix I get from the business sector I’m in….and, finally, the technologies and products we can produce to disrupt the market….in that order.

Staying away from the Spiral

In great organizations, people focus on their work and they have almost a tribal confidence that they can get their job done. Good things happen for both the company and them personally.

You come to work each day knowing that your work can make a difference for the organization as well as yourself….motivating you and fulfilling your needs to support the sacrifice – the long hours, the missed kid birthday parties, and the canceled date nights with your spouse.

In poor organizations, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries and broken processes. They are not clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are getting the job done properly or not.

In some cases, because of pure will, your star performers will work ridiculous hours and deliver on their promises…but they will have little idea what it actually means for the company or for their careers.

To make it worse, when your star performers voice how screwed up the company situation is, management still denies the problem, defends the status quo, and, frankly, ignores the fact that they are dealing with people…not just quarterly goals, revenue targets, and operating income…again, only something you see in a poor company environment.

So how does one create a “good company environment”. For me it’s as simple as breathing air….it comes down to “telling it like it is” with: 1) transparency, and 2) strong communication….and I don’t mean detailing quarterly results with internal webex all-hands.

I like to personally “go out on a limb” by exposing the truths….by being personally vulnerable….ultimately, leading the team in a way that establishes a level of trust. I do this with a healthy dose of transparency and communication.

And in order to get the level of trust I need, one can’t emphasize the level to which you have to provide transparency and communication…..as a leader, you’ll feel uncomfortable with it when you are approaching the level that truely earns trust.

I have many techniques that I use to empower, not only my senior team, but my entire organization with the proper communication patterns only found in any good company environment….and needed to weather personal and professional storms.

Here are a few examples as I reflect over the past 15 years:

1998: 50% marketshare erosion in one year due to changes in the customer ecosystem

1999: A dysfunctional leadership team that can’t run the business

2000: Dot com bust leading to a 2x increase in sales cycles

2001: 911 requiring a 50% staff reduction

2002: Your lead customer cancels their largest product line, on which you have bet the whole company

2003: You enter into a patent war with your largest customer

2004: Your leading acquisition transaction falls through with only months of capital left

2005: Your co-founder and CTO loses his 1 and 3 year old sons in a car accident

2006: A disruptive player enters the market, fundamentally changing the landscape

2010: The board of directors pulls funding right after you hired the “A-Team” & begin to ramp sales

2011: Your product launch is significantly delayed (12 months) due to a fatal flaw in the technology

2012: You realize that your original product that was 3 years in the making has to be thrown away

2013: Investors back out with only 4 weeks of cash flow left

During this time, my father had heart surgery, my mother was diagnosed with leukemia, my wife had postpartum depression, my oldest son was diagnosed with dyslexia, I was diagnosed with a blockage in my left coronary artery*, we had to sell our perfect home in order to keep the startup funds coming…and the personal list goes on.

My question for you:

Do you have the type of company environment where you have the support needed to weather any business or personal storm?

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About Jim Kaskade

Jim currently leads Janrain, the category creator of Consumer Identity & Access Management (CIAM). We believe that your identity is the most important thing you own, and that your identity should not only be easy to use, but it should be safe to use when accessing your digital world. Janrain [...]more →